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Foil and Leaf Gilding on Cultural Artifacts; Forming and Adhesion E

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Foil and Leaf Gilding on Cultural Artifacts; Forming and Adhesion E Revista Matéria, v. 16, n. 1, pp. 540 –559, 2011 ISSN 1517-7076 http://www.materia.coppe.ufrj.br/sarra/artigos/artigo11439 Foil and leaf gilding on cultural artifacts; forming and adhesion E. Darque-Ceretti I, Eric Felder I, Marc Aucouturier II I MINES Paristech-CEMEF, Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux, CNRS UMR 7635, BP 207, F-06904 Sophia-Antipolis, France. e-mails: [email protected] ; [email protected] II Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, CNRS UMR 171, Palais du Louvre, porte des Lions, 14 quai François Mitterrand, F-75001 Paris France. e-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT The process used to obtain foils of more and more thin thickness and coat them on artefacts varied during centuries. It started from thick foils of the first ages mechanically assembled and evolved until the rolled and beaten leaves, a few hundred nanometres thick. This paper will develop, through examples taken from laboratory studies on museum objects, the main evolution steps of gold leaf forming. It will discuss the present knowledge about processes used by hand-workers of different origins and periods: antic Egypt, Roman Empire, western and oriental Middle-Age, South America, modern Europe. A recent mechanical modelling work about gold forming by beating will be exposed. Then will be described, still through recent examples, some of the non-destructive and destructive laboratory methods used to characterise ancient and modern gildings, their composition, thickness and adhesion modes. The different coating process will be discussed, owing to the presently available knowledge. These depend on the substrate nature and the possible necessity to treat its surface before and during the gilding process. Such treatment varies from the “white preparation” found on antic Egyptian artefacts and also on wooden decoration of baroque Brazilian churches, to “oil gilding” used for the recent restoration of the Invalides roof in Paris. It may also include a high temperature firing, as for gilding with powder issued from leaf grinding on Middle-Age Syria glass. The paper will end with a listing of the numerous research perspectives open for the presently poorly developed study of the adhesion mechanisms between gold leaf and its substrate, to understand fully the gilding process. Keywords: Cultural heritage, Gilding, Surface, Adhesion, Forming 1 INTRODUCTION Gold foil and leaf have been used by most human civilisations to decorate all kinds of artworks: bronze, stone, ceramic, wood, cartonnage of the Egyptian sarcophagi, glass objects, etc. The present paper is an attempt to draw a summarised story of the gold foil and leaf preparation and coating on various materials used in cultural heritage artefacts along the ages, starting from the thick gold foils mechanically fastened onto metal or ceramic pieces of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia to reach the very thin gold leaves applied on the surface of precious wood sculptures during the Baroque period or on the metallic roof of the Invalid Church in Paris. That crucial question of the mode of thinning of the gold leaves will be discussed from the mechanical viewpoint and a model will be developed explaining how the exceptional mechanical properties of gold allow obtaining metal leaves of an extreme thinness, a specific process refined by generations of gold hand workers and still used at the present time. But foil or leaf gilding is not only a question of obtaining good quality and colour gold films; it is also a process of coating which was applied to a very large number of substrate materials. This required from the artisans the invention of various kinds of recipes to obtain more or less liable adhesion results onto those substrates. That question will be discussed through the description of the gilding studied on cultural heritage material as different as metal, stone, ceramic, glass, wood or other organic artefacts. Some studies conducted in the laboratories of the present authors with modern investigation means will be described in that framework. The question of the structure of the interface between the bulk object and its gold coating and of the adhesion mode leading to a reasonable strength of the assembly will be detailed and the necessary studies to be developed in order to better understand and better preserve that strength will be discussed. Autor Responsável: E. DARQUE-CERETTI Data de envio: 13/05/11 Data de aceite: 07/06/11 DARQUE-CERETTI, E., FELDER, Eric, AUCOUTURIER, Marc; Revista Matéria, v.16, n. 1 pp. 540 – 559, 2011. 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF GILDING, DEFINITIONS The base product used for gilding may be either pure gold or a gold-base alloy. The alloys were traditionally obtained by alloying gold with silver, copper or both metals. The content of alloying element is adjusted to obtain a desired colour, varying from the pure “gold” colour to “red gold” (mainly copper addition), “green gold” (limited silver addition) or “white gold” (larger silver addition) [ 1]. Modern goldsmiths are using other alloying elements, such as palladium, platinum, mercury, etc. but they are not commonly used for gilding. The gold content of a gold alloy is measured in carat; 100 % gold is 24 carat; so for instance 18 carat gold is a 75 % gold alloy. The numerous authors who focused their writings on foil and leaf gilding agreed more or less to the following definitions for the description of the large range of gold film thickness applied to various substrates [2-3]. - A gold sheet is a thick plate of gold obtained by the first hammering or rolling of the gold or gold alloy ingot; - Gold foils have an intermediate thickness, more than about 10 µm, obtained by hammering or rolling the sheets; - Gold leaves are obtained by beating. Their thickness is smaller than 10 µm and can be as low as 0.1 µm. They are not able to support their own mass and must be handled with a special knife blade or brush. The first gilding technique was carried out using foils. As foil can be handled without special precaution, it could be directly applied to the objects and mechanically fastened. A stone vase (fig. 1) found in south Egypt dating from the Nagada period (end of prehistory 4000-3100 BC) is kept in the Louvre museum. Its handles are decorated with thick gold foils mechanically fastened. Figure 1: Stone vase with foil-gilded handles. South Egypt 4000-3100 BC, Louvre museum The first application of gold foil onto metal is reported on the 3 rd millenary BC [3,4 ]. The British museum holds a set of “nails” in silver from Syria (c. 3000 BC) whose heads are covered by gold foils folded on the back of the nail’s head to fasten them [ 3]. That technique of foil mechanical fastening lasted for a long period of time. For instance the child’s head of figure 2, from the treasure of Oxus dated of the 3 rd century BC is covered with a gold foil assembled on its edges by burnishing [ 4]. Similarly, on the bronze statue of Karomama (850 BC) kept in the Louvre museum, one finds on the arms and legs engraved incisions where the edges of the gold foil, now lost, were forced to keep the foil in place. 541 DARQUE-CERETTI, E., FELDER, Eric, AUCOUTURIER, Marc; Revista Matéria, v.16, n. 1 pp. 540 – 559, 2011. Figure 2: Foil-gilded head with mechanical fastening of the foil. Ancient Iran, 500 BC, British museum The most ancient document about gold foil or leaf mechanical forming was found in an Egyptian tomb of Saqqara, dated of 2500 BC (fig. 3) [6]. One sees a gold melting operation and a worker beating (or hammering?) gold with a round stone. Another Egyptian illustration, found on the funerary manuscript of Neferhonpet (14 th century BC) describes him as the “chief of the makers of thin gold” which indicates he was probably a true goldbeater. The beating technique appears to have been brought to its perfection in ancient Egypt as some authors [ 5] report a leaf thickness of 0.2 µm already in Luxor during the 18 th Dynasty (1550- 1300 BC). This is not more than twice the ultimate thickness reached by the modern gold beaters (with pure 24 carat gold). Even if that value is not very safely attested, another value is given by Pliny the Elder at the beginning of the 1 st century AD [ 6]. Starting from data given by that author on the weight of a stack of 1000 gold leafs, a simple calculation shows that the goldbeaters of that period were able to reach a thickness of 0.4 µm. One can then consider that leaf processing was completely mastered during antic civilisations, Greece and Rome, at least after the 1 st millenary BC. It was applied on all kinds of materials until now. Figure 3: Illustration from an ancient Egyptian tomb at Saqqara (2500B.C.) showing the melting and beating of gold At the end of the 1 st millenary BC, probably around the 3 rd century BC in China, appeared mercury gilding on metals. Pliny the Elder in its Encyclopaedia written during the 1 st century AD [6] reports a special foil gilding technique on metals in which mercury is used as an adhesive. That technique is mentioned in the modern literature as cold mercury gilding in opposition with amalgam gilding for which gold powder or fragments are first mixed with liquid mercury to obtain an amalgam further applied on the metal surface and heated to a temperature high enough (about 400° C) to eliminate most of the mercury by evaporation [ 4]. That technique of mercury gilding was the most common for metals (silver and bronze) gilding during the whole period between the 1 st century AD up to 19 th century.
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